Chapter Two

A Second Impression

Since she was a homunculus, there was no point in summoning a doctor, since a doctor could do nothing to treat such a being. That being the case, all that really needed doing was a Healing Spell performed on her leg and time given for her to rest from her ordeal. As it was, the Einzbern maids gifted in such arts saw to that.

Kiritsugu, for his part, had no patience to deal with the dumbfounded and slightly annoyed Jubstacheit. But then he somehow only felt his own lingering feelings of frustration settle when he returned to the homunculus's room to see how she was faring. It occurred to him then as he took in the sight of her sleeping that the mere presence of her was having a surprisingly calming effect on him.

Her face was only lit by the glow of the roaring fireplace nearby, and though Kiritsugu had no particular intention in mind, he found himself suspended in a moment where he lost all sense of the passage of time as he watched her slumber. She was so…strange, this homunculus. She looked like any human really, despite her strange hair and eyes, but…she acted so much like a machine. And that should have been fine, because in essence her primary function was that of a tool, and yet…her likeness to a machine almost felt no different from how Kiritsugu himself had conducted his way of life for many years now.

Concerning this homunculus and what she needed to do, versus her attitude towards it, this machine-like nature of hers…something about it needed to be…fixed. It was clearly going to turn into a problem for him on the field of battle when it came time to fight for the Grail. This understandably bothered Kiritsugu, though he couldn't think why this original design of hers further proved that it would only backfire on him rather than work in his favor, seeing as how he himself worked like a machine and was quite capable of carrying out his own works as an assassin. Even his assistant, Maiya Hisau, worked the same way.

Maybe it was because this was the only way to modify the homunculus's efficacy as a tool.

He was just thinking of stepping out again when the homunculus stirred, and she opened her crimson eyes. Her voice was a weak thread of sound as she asked: "Where am…I?"

The pressure in Kiritsugu's chest returned, struck again with that strange fascination those eyes evoked in him. This caused his voice to come out kinder than it had before when addressing her, if still quite gruff. "Try not to talk," he told her. "Get some more rest and you'll be all right again."

"Why am I…in the castle?"

Kiritsugu told her what happened, and he experienced another stroke of annoyance at her lack of responding to Jubstacheit's cruelty with what ought to have been anger. But the homunculus didn't understand about anger. While Kiritsugu tried to tell her, something rose up within him, making his blood grow hot and thick. The brief moment of kindness left him as he grew restless and irritated. But not wanting to be impertinent, he sought the solace of the window instead, leaning against the edge of the frame, brooding over the frosted, storming landscape.

It wasn't just Jubstacheit—or Acht, for short—with whom the homunculus ought to be angry, but with him, Kiritsugu, as well. After all, it was his complaint that had led to all this. Something in Kiritsugu, oddly enough, longed to know what it was like to face a blinding fury. Certainly he had faced many zealous and impassioned fighters on the field of battle, but specializing in sniping and bombing created situations where he observed, but seldom experienced, the fury of another.

If he could provoke a reaction—

His long-buried anger, reawakened, seemed to be taking on the physical form of a creature desperate to claw its way out of him. He had to bequeath this anger to this homunculus if she was to know how to truly survive on her own. He had to prove her wrong about such things.

The homunculus though made no secret of her confusion. She forced herself up into a sitting position, perhaps wishing to address Kiritsugu on a more equal plane of vision. Kiritsugu turned his cold, furious eyes on her, with a mind to force her back under the blankets, only to decide against it when he could tell just by looking at her that she wasn't going to listen. Clothed again in a sleeping gown of ivory white, Kiritsugu was reminded all the more by the way her silver hair spilled over her shoulders hat this woman had been made to look very lovely indeed, just as he'd observed when he'd found her stripped bare out in the snow. Here again, he felt a lick of his frustration with Acht, because it was clear that the head of the Einzbern family had been more concerned with creating a beautiful doll rather than a tool for war.

But then the pressure in his chest came back as she raised those red eyes to his dark ones. Kiritsugu heaved a sigh as he tried to shake off the feeling.

Objectively, he supposed that in addition to knowing anger as a necessary means of survival, the homunculus ought to know something of concern for and pride in herself, since clearly she possessed nothing of the sort, not even towards her role as the Grail Vessel. He told her of these things with an unintentional amount of insistence, though he would write it off at the time as just his determination to see that she understood how important it was to be driven by such feelings—by anger, as well as concern for and pride in one's existence—in order to maximize and strengthen the motivation to survive.

And that's how Kiritsugu decided to take it upon himself to teach her all about these things. To do this, he would have to teach her about how the real world worked. Obviously, she was not permitted to leave the confines of the Einzbern castle, but that didn't mean he couldn't bring as much of the outside world to her as was possible. The wealth he'd amassed as an assassin and as a mercenary left him with practically unlimited resources, which was partly why he was always able to do his job a little better each time—as money grew, he was able to acquire better guns, better intel. And seeing as how he had no intention of deviating from his goal of attaining the Holy Grail, he had all this time on his hands to invest such money and time in teaching this homunculus the ways of the world.

"But I should refer to you by a name," he said, folding his arms authoritatively. "Do you have one? Not, 'vessel', and not 'homunculus', but an actual name of your own?"

The homunculus blinked, and then, she smiled as she said: "I'm…Irisviel. Irisviel von Einzbern."

How did she—?

After all that, Kiritsugu wasn't expecting the woman to actually smile. Could it be that within her, she did in fact possess one small speck of pride? Pride in having her own name, Irisviel?

It wasn't much, but it was a starting point, and Kiritsugu began to feel a little more positive about this whole thing already.

On the first clear morning in the wake of the snowstorm, Kiritsugu was able to enjoy a proper morning smoke. He lit it outside in the crisp air on the front grounds of the castle, taking a long drag and exhaling it in a ghostly stream towards the icy blue sky. It was moments like these where he could empty himself even more, and not have to think of anything at all.

But as he lifted the cigarette to his lips again, he caught a movement at the drapes of Irisviel's room. He found Irisviel herself staring out of the window, and her gaze found his.

Then Irisviel tilted her head to one side, much like a curious bird in a cage who knows nothing of what it means to be free. In a way, that was precisely what she was.

If she knew what that really meant, Kiritsugu thought. If I could show her….

And then he knew just where he wanted to begin as far as teaching her about the world was concerned.

"Well, Kiritsugu Emiya, if you feel that this all necessary for what you need in order to succeed in our mission to obtain the Grail in nine years, I shall leave you to it," was Acht's reply when Kiritsugu disclosed to him his intentions. "I allow the freedom to call in whatever resources you need as you proceed with this. I will not stand in your way, nor will any of the others of my family."

It was a very small reference, but the tone in which Acht refered to the Einzberns made it clear that though Irisviel bore the surname as well, she was not technically included in the clan. It was another way Kiritsugu failed to understand the nuances of alchemy—even if Irisviel was not human, had no conventional sort of "birth", she still shared cells and genetic traits with the Einzbern ancestor, Lord Justica.

That being said, Kiritsugu first approached his lessons with the homunculus called Irisviel with as much mechanical thought as any other task to which he was put: the only difference was that instead of handling cold weaponry, he had to access emotional triggers. The best tools he had at his disposal at present for such things were recounts of his experiences in the world. He would not make the mistake of exposing his own buried wounds if he could help it, short of alluding to them if need be, but he possessed no shortage of other people he had watched fall into despair—people he had wanted to save but couldn't, either because it was beyond his power, or because it was the only way to stack the odds of saving the most people as possible in favor of the majority, forcing the minority to suffer in their place, regardless of whether they "deserved" it.

Irisviel, having recovered rather quickly from her ordeal in the forest, was sat up straight in that same private library where the two of them had first properly met. When Kiritsugu joined her, he kept his distance, leaning against the mantelpiece over the fireplace. He closed his eyes for a moment as he conjured the first memory he had in mind to relate, even as he felt Irisviel watching him with utterly keen curiosity.

"If you want to know about anger, about what it means to have the life that is so precious to you destroyed," he began, opening his eyes and gazing fixedly into the depths of the fire, "so that you can develop what is needed in order to fight, and survive, and win, I must tell you of those like myself who gain this power from their anger.

"There was a man I knew, with whom I fought in the ongoing wars in Sierra Leone—have you heard of it? Sierra Leone?"

"No. Tell me about it."

Kiritsugu looked at the homunculus at last, and then beckoned her to follow him to where a map of the world hung on the wall. He pointed the small country of Sierra Leone out to her on the northeastern part of the continent of Africa. "It's hot there. Hot as hell. Hotter probably."

"I am aware of a place called 'Hell'."

"Good. You have a basis of understanding."

"Yes."

"Well, apart from being hot, there are wars there, over diamonds, over children. People dying left and right. And there was a man I knew, whose son was stolen from him."

"Why?"

"Children were often rounded up and used as soldiers in these diamond wars."

Kiritsugu thought a moment of Maiya, of the day he'd found her on a battlefield in the dark heart of a country so war-torn it hardly had a name of its own anymore, of the way she had stared at him so emptily when he'd offered her hand to help her to her feet, the cut she'd suffered to her forehead completing the image of one who no longer cried tears of water, only blood. Yet she had awakened an impulse of kindness within him, even after all these years when she remained so empty and mechanical. When they both did.

He went on with recounting his story to Irisviel. "In his desperate quest to regain his son, he asked if I might help him, and though I did what I could, events culminated in the man ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Do you understand that? Crime and punishment, and what it means to be punished for something that was not your fault?"

"I have a basic knowledge of right and wrong," Irisviel informed Kiritsugu. "And I know that it is wrong to imprison someone for a crime that isn't their fault."

"Yes." Kiritsugu moved away from the map and returned to the fireplace to poke the flames a little. "This man of whom I speak now…he never saw his son again. He died full of rage and despair in the prison cell where they left him to rot. That's all I learned of his fate. I know nothing of what happened to his son, but if I had to hazard a guess…judging by how things tend to go there…his son is probably dead too." This time he stabbed at the embers in the fire, though his hand remained steady.

For a moment, Irisviel was quiet, but Kiritsugu could almost feel her thinking very hard about all he had just told her. She moved with strange caution behind him as she resumed her seat in her chair and went on thinking.

Kiritsugu would not speak until she had something to say.

And then—

"This story," Irisviel said, "is about despair. It evoked anger in the man who suffered that despair."

"Yes. And I…relate to his pain."

"So you have known pain?"

"Yes."

"And loss?"

"Yes."

"And this is the source of your anger?"

"Yes."

"But it is not physical pain?"

"No. It's something you feel intangibly. Though…." Kiritsugu's voice tailed away a moment as he felt the pull of his painful memories.

"'Though', what?" Irisviel pressed.

Kiritsugu shook his head. "Though it can be bad enough that there can be a physical reaction. You would feel it…in here." He turned to Irisviel at last and lightly tapped his chest, right over where his heart was. Sometimes he even felt mildly intrigued that he didn't get a hollow metal sound instead when he did something like that.

Then Irisviel said, "I see," laying a hand over her own heart, a heart that wasn't a natural human one but a constructed imitation, if a good one.

Kiritsugu narrowed his eyes at her. "No. No, you don't see. You won't until you understand what it means to have appreciation for your own life only to have it ripped apart."

"But was this not the point of your recounting this story for me?" Irisviel protested.

Kiritsugu looked away from her, gazed back into the fire. "I saw them together, the man and his son, before all that tragedy happened. They were happy. If I could…."

His voice tailed away again as he recalled that moment, that happy nostalgia that had caused him a moment's anguish before he'd hardened his resolve and pulled the trigger on own his father, despite the screams of his heart.

Yet as always, he managed to block off the feeling itself quite easily, and to Irisviel he must've appeared as emotionless as she herself was. But now that he had found his answer in seeking the Holy Grail for he miracle he needed to save the world, it wouldn't be long before he could divest himself of the burden he had taken on. The dark sins he had stained his soul with would be repaid in kind when he achieved that end. When he had the Grail in hand and could see that his wish was fulfilled, all that the world required of him would be accomplished, and he would be free to burn in the fires of his own bloody deeds.

That was his plan, anyway, and in order to carry it through, he had to harden his resolve more than ever before, empty himself of everything. Nine more years, and then it would finally be over. Maybe then…he could find some modicum of peace.

Until then….

"Kiritsugu," Irisviel piped up from where she continued to observe him in her seat.

Kiritsugu looked up at her from the fire, the ultimate emptiness in his heart threatening to consume him entirely.

She had that look of a curious bird again. "If you don't wish to speak of this…if it…makes you sad…."

Kiritsugu couldn't help a mirthless laugh somehow and poked at the fire again. "I'm fine either way. I've learned to deal with this kind of thing."

"How?"

"By denying myself the indulgence of feeling such things at all. It's the only way I've been able to act on my anger, without letting it poorly affect my judgment. I act on it, but I force myself not to feel it as I do so. It's a bit of a paradox, I suppose."

"So anger can be a weakness as well as a strength."

"If you don't know how to use it properly, yes. Just as a gun can hurt you rather than help you, if you don't know what you're doing with it. Or any tool, really." Kiritsugu glanced meaningfully back at Irisviel, but she had assumed a pensive air as she continued to watch him.

Then she said: "Well, I think, in that case, you ought to tell me what makes a life worth appreciating as much as why having that life torn apart ought to evoke anger."

For the first time since entering the library that day, Kiritsugu was genuinely taken aback, even more so than when Irisviel had smiled for him when she told him her name. "What're you—?"

"The more I reflect," Irisviel cut across him, "the more I realize that you might be teaching me all of this…backwards."

"Backwards?"

"Should you not start with what I must value in life first? Only then can I learn how to be angry in the name of it when it's threatened. Is that not so?"

Kiritsugu stared at her as her words took effect. And he had to concede that she was…actually right. The only problem was…he couldn't remember the last time he'd been nothing but purely happy. Well, perhaps his last night with Natalia, but even then—

Still—

"Fine."

Kiritsugu tossed aside the fire poker and at long last took a seat in the chair opposite Irisviel's. He faced her almost challengingly, but at the same time he sifted through distant and long-buried memories in order to dredge up some piece of happiness that might still be inside him that he could share with her so she would understand what it meant to value such things.

Initially, it wasn't easy—it even hurt a little just to remember that he once used to be that happy, but nothing he had seen since losing Natalia would suffice. He would have to expose parts of his soul he didn't like to expose to anyone, not even to Maiya.

But if that's what it took, he would grit his teeth and bear breaking the rule he had set for himself earlier.

"I'll have to retrace my steps a bit," he declared after some time, during which Irisviel was completely patient in waiting for him to speak. "Perhaps I'll just start from the beginning. I was born in a country called Japan. My mother died shortly after I was born, so I only have memories traveling the world with my father." He ticked these facts off as easily as if they were from someone else's life. "But for the times we passed through the it…I do remember the place…fondly."

"Japan is…a good place to live?" Irisviel ventured to ask.

"For some. I mean, when I remember it…I think of…starry nights eating watermelon, and catching fireflies that looked like stars rising out of the grass, and the cicadas buzzing in summer, and the smell of the sakura trees—I mean the cherry blossom trees—when the wind's blowing through them, and…looking up and seeing a full moon dominating the sky in silver brilliance…." Kiritsugu caught himself, realizing he was wandering into an enchantment created by his own memories. He cleared his throat. "Is there anything I've said that you don't understand so far? Any words you don't know?"

"Well…what's watermelon?"

Kiritsugu told her, and he noticed that as he did so an odd expression overcame her features, like his description of watermelon actually delighted her, despite the fact that since she was a homunculus, she really had no interest in or requirement for food. At the same time, Kiritsugu's lips involuntarily twitched.

"A country that has something like that to eat," Irisviel mused. "It sounds like magic. A different kind I mean, nothing like magecraft. Just…magic. Could you perhaps…tell me more about Japan?"

Kiritsugu sat back in his chair, actually relaxing for the first time perhaps since he'd arrived at the Einzberns' castle. "I'll tell you more of what I remember. Since you're so interested."

And so he did. And as it happened, he had a lot more to say—all of it good—than he originally thought he would.